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From Middletown to the Middle East

~ Reflections on travel and teaching

From Middletown to the Middle East

Monthly Archives: January 2012

Hope

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by tgilheany in Family

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Tags

democracy, economic divisions, Israel, minority rights, supporters of Israel, west jerusalem

A step up from my usual felafel sandwich

“What have you seen of the gap between the Arab schools and the Jewish ones?” While it is not a question I can reply to more effectively than many excellent reports have done, I was greatly encouraged to have been asked it, due to the identity of the inquirer. I was having dinner with a longtime American supporter of Israel at a delicious kosher restaurant close by the top-notch West Jerusalem hotel where she was staying. Interested in the concerns of the Bedouin and the effects of the barrier on West Bank villages as well as in the gender and economic divisions within Israel, my hostess was extremely well-informed and incisive. A successful professional in the U.S., she brought her intellect, her emotional investment in the Jewish state, and her universal values to the discussion.

Would there be topics on which my interlocutor and I differed? I don’t doubt it. Is her voice currently the dominant one among supporters of Israel? It is not. Nonetheless, she represents the force most likely to make a real change in the conflict. Americans who are in favor of a vibrant, democratic, peaceful Israel are, I believe, the group positioned best to move us from the status quo to a more humane future.

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Optimistic Lebanon

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by tgilheany in Family

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Beirut, Christian, Druze, Lebanon, Muslim, optimistic, Saida

Your image of Beirut? This is one of the few buildings in the city center that still bears the scars of war.

Many other buildings have been beautifully renovated, as on this side street.

Beautifully crafted renovations, new and attractive towers, and carfully preserved, well-presented antiquities are all on display in Lebanon. From the Saida souk to the new shops on Beirut’s Corniche, everything is clean and much functions well. Conversations with cosmopolitan Christians, Muslims and Druze all have an undertone of energy and forward thinking. The Arab Spring is definitely in the air. As a Muslim woman said to me, “Even if there are many difficult times ahead, now we can speak out loud. Even here in Beirut you used to feel that you needed to watch out, that someone could be listening. It is amazing to watch the people in Syria who say, ‘Use my name. I don’t care.’”

Walking through the old city of Saida, I peeked into a mosque. A shopkeeper across the street said, “Please go in! Take pictures!” He helped the women with me cover themselves appropriately. As we were leaving, an older gentleman came into pray. When he found out we were from the U.S. he said, “America, my friend! America, mother of all nations!” His son lives in Houston, and he was so welcoming. In entering another mosque in Beirut a man did ask a guard why he was letting in non-Muslims, but the guard stood his ground and admitted us.

The streets of Beirut are alive with people, restaurant rows in both the Muslim and Christian quarters of the city draw people of all faiths, and political debate is evident in posters and flags of different groups. Friends in construction are building, though they are holding back on very large investments until the situation in Syria settles.

Reading the papers shows plenty of issues to be concerned about, and the tragic events in Syria could easily spill over into Lebanon. Nonetheless, the spirit of the country is strongly positive.

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And you thought you had a tough teaching job…

06 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by tgilheany in Fulbright project

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conflict resolution, human rights, Shuafat, teaching the conflict, UNRWA

Future teachers

Almost every Israeli teacher will have served in the military, many on checkpoints. Every Palestinian teacher will have passed through those checkpoints. Two people, both teachers, on opposite sides of that encounter, then bring those experiences into the classroom. It cannot help but influence their teaching.

So describes Dr. Muhannad Beidas, the Chief of the Field Education Programme in the West Bank for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He works in a compound of temporary trailers and cement buildings in northern Jerusalem – quite a contrast to the new and beautifully designed Israeli monument and museum to the Ammunition Hill battle just across the street. Faded posters of villagers in traditional Palestinian dress adorn the walls along with graphs and tables of student progress.

We are discussing the challenges of teaching in the context of the conflict. As we considered teaching for human rights, dignity and tolerance, Dr. Beidas noted the enormous attention absorbed by textbooks, which I have written about before. He argued that while UNRWA has made great progress on the content of the books, ultimately it is teacher quality that makes by far the larger difference. “You can give the most thoughtfully designed textbook to a bad teacher, and they will not use it effectively. A great teacher can teach an article from a tabloid newspaper and the students will really benefit.”

Dr. Beidas reports that since 1999 UNRWA schools have been seeking to explicitly teach a human rights curriculum. The human rights curriculum has several parts – staff, training, student initiatives, and materials, which include books and worksheets. Funding is an issue, as always. When the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ebbs somewhat, funding increases. Counterproductively, just when education for conflict resolution is needed most, at times of greater tension, international funders pull back. He is also very clear about the limits of such a curriculum. “We have a school in the Jalazone camp, next to a settlement. We have been seeking for 20 years to repair and expand the school, and just now it seems we might be getting some greater permission. Consider that these students are going to school in these cracked conditions, and they know why. Their teachers are frustrated. Imagine then how hard it is to teach tolerance.” He noted that the challenges are different in different areas. The Shuafat Refugee Camp, for example, is surrounded on three sides by the separation barrier. Cut off from the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority cannot patrol it. Israeli police do not enter. As a result, hard drug use, traditionally extremely rare in Palestinian society, is on the rise.

Still, there is some good news from Dr. Beidas’ perspective. The curriculum can make a difference, influencing not only the students themselves but the siblings and family. When they have more money, UNRWA actually gives some of the books to the students to keep, so they will be in the home. They are emphasizing interactive teaching, with students rewriting stories, creating their own narratives. Every school now has a parliament, so they can experience democratic engagement and the empowerment that accompanies it. Teachers trained in conflict resolution have influences beyond the classroom to the wider society.

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Maps of Ramallah

05 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by tgilheany in How to

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ramallah map, Ramallah street signs

Walking through Ramallah, one notices that almost every street has a new-looking street sign, in both Arabic and in English, with short biographies of those honored. The names are fascinating. Many are wonderful – poets, human rights activists, community leaders. Edward Said has a street. There are socialist leaders from around the world – I noticed Salvador Allende and Patrice Lumumba streets. Some are sad – one is named for the Kfar Qasim massacre.  A quick web search discovers that, disappointingly but unsurprisingly, at least one street is named for a major terror mastermind, Yihyeh Ayyash.

On a more mundane level, the Google and Bing maps of Ramallah give no street names and few streets. There are maps of Ramallah online in English, though none seem near complete. If anyone finds an English-language map of Ramallah that is more complete than the following five, let me know.

Of course, since the street names are all new, Ramallah residents don’t use the names – they use landmarks. “Go to the right of the Fruity juice shop until the circle with the clock tower. Bear right until you pass the Grand Suites Hotel…”

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The Israel Museum and higher standards

01 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by tgilheany in Fulbright project

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enlightenment, home demolitions, Israel Museum, Jewish philanthropy, oppression

Pieter Lastman, Hagar and the Angel in the Wilderness, ca.1625

Angels – Jewish, Christian and Muslim – gather in a room of the Israel Museum. In another, a contemporary Japanese artist reflects on the themes of home and travel in a multimedia piece. Another room is a perfect reconstruction of an 18th Century French salon. The entire place bespeaks a cosmopolitan sophistication, a love of diverse perspectives, and a connection between one’s interior life and the interior lives of others.

Some conservatives claim that critics hold Israel to a higher standard than the surrounding Arab dictatorships and monarchies, or than the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The Israel Museum shows why we might hold that higher standard, reflecting many beautiful and generous aspects of Israeli society. The tradition of philanthropy is remarkable, revealed in donations as small as a Yemeni bridal headdress and as large as entire wings of the museum. The architectural design is peaceful and unobtrusive, forming the perfect backdrop against which to view artworks. The commentary places each work in a broad context.

After a day in the Israel Museum, one would be stunned to see Hebron, read about home demolitions, or see the numbers of East Jerusalem children with nowhere to go to school. The disconnect between the long and deep Enlightenment traditions of Israel and some of its current policies is far more surprising than the behaviors of impoverished developing countries.

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Recent posts…

  • Jericho – my good and bad calls
  • Evidence of support – plaques but little else
  • Skirting Jerusalem
  • Ibrahimi mosque/Machpelech cave
  • Dr. Hasan

Days gone by

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